American politics will never be perfectly pure because politicians represent and reflect imperfect human beings.

Yet voters unreasonably expect the people they elect to be generally better than themselves.

It’s actually more of a hope, even a demand, than an expectation. Citizens have become accustomed to expecting the worst from scandal after scandal.

A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California asked adults whether they thought state government was run by a few big interests standing up for themselves or was run in the interests of all people.

No surprise: 67% answered major interests. Only 31% answered the people.

While predictable, that is disappointing and sad.

Most politicians I’ve known over the decades have been relatively ethical, just as most of the voters who elect them are essentially honest. Voters tend to choose people with similar values.

But there are always bad apples. That’s nature.

It is also human nature, especially in America, to strive for perfection, even when we know it is impossible to achieve that goal, at least for more than a short period of time.

That is why legislation has been introduced in Sacramento that could reduce the influence of special interest money in politics.

It would allow California governments, the state, counties and all cities to establish some form of public financing of election campaigns.

Listen, running to the office costs tons of money, especially in California. The money has to come from somewhere. And as I have written many times, either the public buys the politicians or the special interests will eagerly and often do.

In California, some cities are allowed to set up public financing systems, but others, illogically, are not. Neither are counties or the state.

The City of Los Angeles operates a public funding system. Public funds correspond to private contributions.

For every $1 up to a certain amount a city resident donates to a city council or citywide candidate, taxpayers kick in $6. But candidates receiving public funds must agree to campaign spending limits.

LA has spent approximately $12.8 million in matching funds for the 2022 election.

San Francisco has a similar system.

But Oakland has another partial public funding method: Each registered voter receives four $25 Democracy Dollars that they can donate to qualified city candidates.

Long Beach and Berkeley also have public financing systems.

Those five entities are allowed to do so because they are so-called charter cities. In a strange quirk, 357 cities are prohibited by general law from introducing government funding for campaigns.

That happened because of the Political Reform Act of 1974, a ballot measure sponsored by young Secretary of State Jerry Brown, who ran for governor on a post-Watergate platform for cleaning up Sacramento.

Brown’s measure required more substantive disclosure of campaign contributions and expenses. But he feared opponents would attack it as a scheme to spend taxpayers’ money on politicians. So he subscribed to the initiative of the current limitation of government funding.

We were afraid Republicans would say no to public funding, use that against us in the campaign, and it wouldn’t pass, recalls Bob Stern, who helped Brown write the law and is a longtime political reformer.

The measure was adopted by an overwhelming majority.

In 2016, the Legislature approved and then-Gov. Brown signed a bill to lift the ban. But the court ruled that the question should be put to voters because of how Brown drafted the 1974 bill.

That’s what current legislation would do to send the question back to voters in November

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2024

Two identical bills SB 24 and AB 270 have been introduced by veteran

stands

Senator Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) and Councilman Alex Lee (D-San Jose

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Umberg says he’s not exactly sold on government funding, but wants to let local entities experiment with it if they want to.

I’ve been trying to find a way to reduce the influence of money in politics, he says, but I’m still undecided. I’d like to see what local communities would do.

States are called laboratories of democracy. Cities and counties could be laboratories to deal with the influence of money in politics.

Senator Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), author of the 2016 bill, says: This is a matter of making 1,000 flowers bloom.

Campaign costs are getting out of hand. It puts so much power in the hands of the wealthy and special interests. I do not see it [public financing] like a magic bullet. But it can make our campaigns cleaner.

Last year’s election raised $311 million in private money for legislative and other state races.

Even if the public paid for everything, that would have been just rude

1/10th one tenth

of 1% of the state budget. But no one is proposing that, although it is undoubtedly a dream of Trent Lange, president of the California Clean Money Campaign, a reform group.

Public funding of campaigns is the best investment taxpayers can ever make, Lange emphasizes.

Public funding is a great idea in the abstract, but I don’t know what difference it makes given that independent spending committees are unlimited, says Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson, former chair of the LA City Ethics Commission.

Independent spending committees operate independently of candidates and have no spending limit. They are a relatively new political parasite that can overwhelm election races.

That’s because of one of the dumbest decisions ever made by the U.S. Supreme Court: a 1976 ruling that money is speech and is therefore protected by the 1st Amendment in many political situations. And all the time I thought money was property.

But Levinson points to a plus for government funding.

You’re likely to get good candidates who otherwise wouldn’t be able to apply, she says. It gives them an early step up.

If cities or counties want to try it, at least they shouldn’t be banned by the state.